


Souvenir

by letdown



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Depression, F/M, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Insomnia, Nightmares, Post-Season/Series 02, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Steve Harrington Needs a Hug, Underage Drinking, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, this is pretty depressing but ends on a happy-ish note
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-29
Updated: 2019-09-29
Packaged: 2020-11-07 15:31:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20819633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letdown/pseuds/letdown
Summary: Figuratively, Steve tried stuffing all the bad memories into a box, taping it shut. The box reads "DO NOT OPEN" in black sharpie and gets shoved into the darkest, furthest corner of the attic to be forgotten and never opened again. The monsters are meant to be gone.Problem is, it doesn't work like that.





	Souvenir

**Author's Note:**

> this is wildly unedited

The gate is closed. The monsters are gone, locked away in another dimension.

Figuratively, Steve tried stuffing all the bad memories into a box, taping it shut. The box reads "DO NOT OPEN" in black sharpie and gets shoved into the darkest, furthest corner of the attic to be forgotten and never opened again. The monsters are meant to be gone.

Problem is, it doesn't work like that.

During daytime, the confinements of the box are enough to keep the monsters locked away. Steve's mind operates in happier spheres, mostly. He busies himself with school, extracurriculars, college essays. He tries to make an effort, tries to make things work. 

But when the sun sets and he is by himself, the monsters break out of the box, crawl back down from the attic to his childhood bedroom. Some nights they seep through the walls, leaving bloody water marks on his ceiling. They drip onto his face like water from a trickling faucet. But it's hot, sticky blood flooding his room with gore and fear and terror. 

Other nights, the monsters bury him alive. Gravel fills his mouth, chokes him, fills up his lungs. He tries to chew his way through it all, but it's like chewing on glass, and he wakes up with the inside of his cheek bitten to shreds and the metallic taste of blood in his mouth. 

When winter rolls around, Steve covers the pool in the backyard with a plastic tarp to not have to be reminded of what happened here. It's not like anyone has used it in a while. 

His face has healed. The swelling went down and the bruises turned from purple to blue to green to yellow and disappeared. Stitches were taken out, gashes closed up. His broken cheekbone healed, his nose, well -- not so much. When looking at his reflection in the mirror, he sees a distinct bump on the bridge of his nose. A distortion that reminds him of the horrors of that night, along with the chronic nosebleeds that probably won't ever go away. A souvenir, a reminder that whatever it is that they trapped in another dimension will haunt him forever, along with the terrors locked within his own universe. 

* 

Steve doesn't want to think about it too much. He doesn't want to, but his mind won't behave. 

He catches himself biting his cuticles, a nervous habit he doesn't want to develop any further. When Dustin, that little shithead that clings to his side like a limpet these days, comments on it, he switches to keeping his mouth and hands busy by holding cigarettes. Dustin comments on that, too. 

"You're continuously inhaling carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and hydrogen cyanide, just to mention a few of the chemical compounds here. Hydrogen cyanide, Steve. Do you know where that was used?" 

"I almost failed Chem." 

"It was used in gas chambers." 

"By the Germans?" 

"The.…the Nazis." 

People love to make remarks: on the makeshift ashtrays he keeps around, on the state of the circles underneath his eyes, on the shaking of his hands. He is so tired of having to listen to what comes out of other people's mouths. 

He couldn't care less. It keeps him busy, it calms his nerves. There used to be something else that used to do a much better job at that: arijuana. God, the marijuana he used to love to smoke turns into his personal enemy, his personal hell. Instead of soft clouds it makes him ride waves of paranoia so intense he considers going to the hospital. His refuge, his last safe space, a mind-altered sphere far from evil, it's gone, demolished. 

What still does the job, though, is alcohol. Spirits with percentages as high as they can get, they give him comfort, they give him rest. Before going to sleep, he resorts to his parents' liquors, nicely displayed in a polished vitrine. It's an expensive selection, too valuable to act as a sleeping aid, really. But a few sips of liquors that not only burn away his ability to dream but also half of the lining of his esophagus and stomach are still a reliable remedy for nightmares and insomnia. They give him restless nights: He wakes up seven, eight hours later, with no recollection of any dreams, any visitations, but with the feeling of having fallen asleep five minutes prior, and a pounding headache that refuses to go away all day long. 

Still, this is the better alternative; the lesser of two evils. But it doesn't take long for it to lose its effect. 

When alcohol is as ineffective as homeopathy, Steve feels like he is out of options. 

He wants to blame it on the approaching winter, the lack of sunlight, the days of nothing but rain and cloudy skies; the fact that some nights he can't sleep at all and others he sleeps for twelve hours at a time without feeling rested. He thinks that maybe it's, it's got a name, that something that is happening to him: Something that manifested itself in his genes long ago, that plagued his grandmother after her husband died, that crept upon his mother after she found out about Steve's father's close-knit relationships to his young, female colleagues. 

Steve doesn't know, doesn't care enough to know. He hopes it'll go away on ist own, this figurative but somehow literal weight on his shoulders, the pressure on his chest. One day, though, he wakes up feeling so crushed that he can't bring himself to get out of bed. He misses first period, then second, and he just watches as the clock ticks and ticks and ticks. 

He wishes he had the house to himself, now, as his door cracks open and his mother slips inside his room, softly calling his name and reminding him he should be in class. She steps closer, he hears concern in her voice now. 

"I feel sick, Mom," he tells her. Sick in the head, unfixable. Fix the world, erase the past two years, take all the evil and shove it elsewhere, take it away from Hawkins, take it away from his life. 

His mother weaves her fingers through his hair, whispers soft words to him. Her touch is like honey, he wants to lean into it and for it to never end. He wants her to stay, wants her to never stop stroking his hair. It's blissful while it lasts, but it doesn't last long. She has to go to work, she tells him. He should call if he needs something. She leans in to kiss his forehead before heading to the door. It leaves Steve feeling hollow. 

* 

The phone rings throughout the afternoon. Steve knows who it is, because there is only one person who has been calling the house to talk to him in months, but he can't will himself to take the calls. Thinking of the person he expects at the other end of the line makes him having to fight through waves of pain. A pain that he shouldn't feel physically, yet he does. He yearns to hear her voice, but hates himself for it. 

At the break of dusk, his room feels heavy with her presence. He thinks he might really be sick, might be having a fever dream. 

"Hey," she says. "Your mom let me in." 

He cracks open an eye, squints at her. Her body is tense, uncomfortable, her eyes are anywhere but on him. Her arms are crossed in front of her chest, one hand rubbing her biceps. She runs her teeth over her bottom lip, pouting slightly. As if she knows this isn't her place to be, as if she knows she's causing more harm than good with her presence. 

Is she? 

He feels a throbbing sadness spreading from his stomach, leading all the way into his fingertips and toes. 

He yearns for her to touch him, wants to pretend for merely five minutes like none of this has ever happened, as if they were just stupid teenagers, as if -- 

"I brought your homework," she says. She rambles on about History and Calculus and rustles with papers for a bit. Then, her voice fades away mid sentence. "Are you feeling up for a walk?" 

He eyes the window, sees raindrops streaming down the glass. He looks at her, her hair all frizzy and curling even more than usually from the humidity. 

"Never mind." 

Then, her hand reaching out. Slowly, as if to gain the trust of a stray animal. Her nails touching his scalp: white-hot knives piercing his heart. A gesture that almost has all his walls crumbling down. Words are at the tip of his tongue, at the brink of escaping his mouth. His muscles fight to develop a life of their own, but he refuses to give in. Rationality keeps them confined like a puppet player controlling his marionettes by their strings. 

He thinks this is rock bottom. But then, it doesn't really get better after this. 

*

In the end, it's the kid that manages to get through to him. 

The kid with his lizards and his science talk, his missing bones and teeth. It's he who sticks around, who won't accept No for an answer ever. 

"Oxygen, Steve, ever heard of that? There is none of that left in your room." 

He drags him outside, drags him over to the Byers, to the Sinclairs. His personal chauffeur, that's what he is to Dustin, Steve thinks, but that's okay. It's a good enough reason to leave the house, to make sure the shithead and his other little friends get home safe. It's good enough for him, a reason to feel needed, to feel like he has a purpose again: Dustin relying on him to pick him up after last period is reason enough for him to get out of bed even on bad days. 

Steve doesn't know how it happens, but the kid becomes someone he cares for, someone he looks forward to seeing. He brightens his day, in a rather annoying way, most of the time. 

Steve wouldn't have it any other way. 

One night, with the taste of stale liquor on his lips, he tells him, "Sometimes I feel like I need to talk to a shrink." 

Now this might be rock bottom: Making a barely fourteen year-old carry a burden like this. 

The response he gets is a look he couldn't possibly interpret: Dustin trying to comprehend the meaning of possessing this bit of information, Dustin trying to figure out how to handle this situation. Steve lets himself talk, unable to keep it in any longer. 

"Like. I know it couldn't hurt, but I know I couldn't actually do it, because I'd end up locked away. I'd get locked up with the loonies on the spot." 

"Mentally - mentally ill people." 

"Whatever, sorry. S'all the same to me. I just - I just, I feel like…" He stops to take a drag from his cigarette. "Like, do you get me? I feel so - so messed up after all this." A vague gesture, enough to convey the things unsaid. 

A pregnant pause: Dustin eyeing him from the side, unable to read him. "If - if you feel like you need to talk about it, talk to us. Do you think none of us are struggling with this? We understand you." 

Steve wants to laugh at the absurdity of this, of his reality: A bunch of middle schoolers being his emotional support, the only people who understand his pain. How pathetic he is, how ashamed he will feel once the toxins have left his bloodstream, once his head has cleared up. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, thinking about taking all his words back. 

How could he have never considered this? That behind their cocky preteen remarks, they were struggling just like him? He considers it: their carefully put up facades crumbling at night. It's a gut-wrenchingly unfair image. They are supposed to be carefree, not to fight the same old battles and the same monsters over and over again. 

"Sometimes when it gets too bad for one of us, we talk about it. We support each other. That's - that's what the Party does. We know we're not supposed to talk about it, but as long as we don't tell anyone who wasn't involved, we're fine. Whenever you need to talk - if you would just finally use your radio, I've showed you a million times how to use it." 

"Gotta show me once more, then." 

* 

It's a time consuming process, healing. 

It's slow and exhausting, and most of the time Steve feels like he's treading water. There are days when he asks himself if this is worth fighting for, there are days when he is convinced that the answer is no. 

But he keeps going. And it becomes a routine, an automatism. And when spring comes around and he wakes to birds chirping outside his window, Steve finally feels like he can breathe again.

**Author's Note:**

> talk to me on [tungle dot hell](https://lletdown.tumblr.com)


End file.
